Tracking militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy

Adelson, Sheldon

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Sheldon Adelson, CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and one of the world’s wealthiest individuals, is an important financier of militarist “pro-Israel” groups, as well as a prominent supporter of rightwing politicians in both the United States and Israel. Among the organizations he has backed are the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Zionist Organization of America, Freedom’s Watch, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Adelson is a long-time supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The free newspaper he founded, Israel Hayom, was widely seen as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, and was criticized for this by both the Israeli right[1] and the left.[2] But Adelson abandoned Netanyahu in 2018 after it became clear the Prime Minister would be indicted on corruption charges.[3]

Adelson has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on U.S. elections, backing a long line of unsuccessful presidential campaigns. During the 2016 GOP primary, Adelson initially appeared to back Sen. Marco Rubio. After Donald Trump won the Republican primary, Adelson reportedly spent some $25 million supporting the real estate mogul’s campaign before shifting his focus toward congressional candidates. After Trump’s poor showing during the third debate with Hillary Clinton, Adelson reportedly “bemoaned Trump’s lack of focus and what he sees as squandered opportunities.”[4] Commenting on Adelson’s election spending, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman has argued that Adelson “personifies everything that is poisoning our democracy and Israel’s today.”[5] The Times columnist wrote in early 2015 that “it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away giant sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time.”[6]

Adelson promotes extremist views with respect to Israeli security. For instance, he has denied that Palestinians exist as a distinct Arab people and promoted engaging in nuclear war to stop Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. In late 2013, Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University in New York City that the United States should drop a nuclear bomb somewhere in the Iranian desert. “Then,” Adelson said, “you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.’”[7]

Adelson has also pushed for U.S. strikes on Syria, and even offered to whip congressional votes in favor of a strike for President Obama.[8]

Adelson has been active in efforts to promote a positive, “beyond the conflict” view of Israel, financing a website called “Rethink Israel” that promotes Israeli social policies on everything from gay rights to fur coats. “Highlighting positive aspects of Israel, a country that truly is innovative and interesting, does help develop a fully-rounded picture,” wrote one commenter for the Daily Beast’s “Open Zion” blog. “And this is surely a better use of Adelson’s money than funding Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign or subsidizing a free Israeli newspaper that relentlessly glorifies the image of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” But such an approach “basically tries to change the subject by talking about any aspect of life in Israel that has nothing to do with the Palestinians or the occupation, from boutique wineries to drip agriculture. It works great among people who already love Israel uncritically—and falls flat among everyone else.”[9]

Asked whether Israel would be able to maintain any pretentions of being a democracy if it pursues his preferred policies, Adelson responded, “So Israel won’t be a democratic state. So what?”[10]

Campaign Spending

Adelson has been a major donor to Republican political campaigns, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent elections.[11] His campaign spending began to receive concerted public attention during the 2012 U.S. elections because of his massive donations to groups backing the campaigns of Newt Gingrich and later Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan, as well as for his lavish donations to the Karl Rove-backed Crossroads GPS and PACs linked to the billionaires Charles and David Koch and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).[12] All told, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Adelson and his spouse spent nearly $100 million trying to influence the election that year.[13]

In advance of the 2016 presidential election cycle, reports emerged that Adelson and his spouse were looking to invest in a more “electable” GOP presidential nominee. “This time, the Adelsons are plotting their investments based not on personal loyalty but on a much more strategic aim: to help select a Republican nominee they believe will have broad appeal to an increasingly diverse national electorate,” reported the Washington Post in March 2014. “This strategy would favor more-established 2016 hopefuls such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.” The Post noted that Adelson enjoyed a particularly warm relationship with Mike Huckabee, who Adelson once introduced at a Zionist Organization of America awards ceremony as “a great person, a great American, and a great Zionist.”[14]

In November 2014, Adelson attended a meeting of prominent right-wing Jewish American donors in New York City hosted by the Zionist Organization of America. The event— which was apparently intended to build support for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was the guest of honor— also featured a number of “pro-Israel” Christian Zionists like Christians United for Israel chairman John Hagee and Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN), as well as major backers of neoconservative groups like Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus.[15]

The meeting was noteworthy in part for comments Adelson reportedly made after a private two-hour meeting he had with Cruz. According to the New York Observer, Adelson said that Cruz was “too right wing” and “a longshot to win the nomination.” According to the Observer, Adelson called the newspaper after publication of the story “to dispute that characterization of his reaction to Mr. Cruz. Mr. Adelson made clear to the Observer that he was the only person in the room with Mr. Cruz and thus the only one in a position to know how he felt about the Senator.”[16]

In April 2015, Adelson courted many of the Republican presidential candidates during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) annual meeting, including Cruz, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).[17]

Just days before the RJC event, Politico reported that Adelson was favoring Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. The paper reported that Adelson views Rubio as “the future of the Republican Party” and that Rubio “has emerged as the clear front-runner” to win the “Sheldon Adelson primary” according to “nearly a half-dozen sources close to the multibillionaire casino mogul.”[18]

Responding to the news, Donald Trump tweeted: “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!”[19]

His efforts to support a “electable” GOP candidate notwithstanding, Adelson backed Trump after the real estate magnate won the Republican primary, reportedly spending some $25 million in support of the campaign.[20]

Backing Losers

Adelson has a track record of backing losing candidates. After the 2012 elections, commentators noted that key campaigns targeted by Adelson-associated super PACs turned out to be among the election’s most important losers. Adelson gave $1.5 million to Independence Virginia PAC, which supported Republican candidate George Allen, who lost to Democrat Tim Kaine.[21] Other failed 2012 congressional campaigns bolstered by Adelson cash included those of GOP Rep. Allen West (R-FL), Florida Senate candidate Connie Mack, New Jersey House candidate Shmuley Boteach, California House candidate Abel Maldonado, and Arizona House candidate Vernon Parker.[22] Only one prominent candidate backed by Adelson—Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, whose top donor was Adelson’s Sands Corporation and who eked out a narrow victory over Democrat Shelley Berkley—ultimately emerged victorious.[23]

Adelson also spent lavishly on a high-profile effort by the Republican Jewish Coalition to turn out traditionally Democratic Jewish voters for Mitt Romney, principally using the issue of Israel as a wedge. Exit polls revealed, however, that Barack Obama’s support among Jewish voters in 2012 nearly matched his 2008 showing, with almost 70 percent of them casting their ballots for the Democrat.[24]

Adelson’s political donations during the 2012 election cycle generated ire across the political spectrum. Even Sen. John McCain, a Romney supporter, criticized Adelson’s campaign cash, arguing during a June 2012 PBS interview: “Much of Mr. Adelson’s casino profits that go to him come from his casino in Macau, which says that obviously, maybe in a roundabout way foreign money is coming into an American political campaign. That is a great deal of money, and we need a level playing field and we need to go back to the realization … that we have to have a limit on the flow of money and corporations are not people.”[25]

Discussing why Adelson was committed to donate “limitless” amounts of money to influence the elections, the New York Times reasoned: “The first answer is clearly his disgust for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supported by President Obama and most Israelis. He considers a Palestinian state “a stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people,” and has called the Palestinian prime minister a terrorist. He is even further to the right than the main pro-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which he broke with in 2007 when it supported economic aid to the Palestinians.”[26]

Discussing Adelson’s relationship with Newt Gingrich, the Daily Beast reported: “When Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians an ‘invented people’ and accused the State Department of coddling those ‘who would censor the world on behalf of Islam,’ it may have seemed to some to be head-scratching harshness. But his views on foreign policy, and particularly the Middle East, appear to be in lockstep with his staunchly pro-Israel backers, including the casino-owning billionaire who is one of Gingrich’s most generous supporters.”[27]

Global Activities

In mid-2007, Adelson attended a conference in Prague titled “Democracy and Security” that was cosponsored by the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, the Czech Foreign Ministry, the Prague Security Studies Institute, and Spain’s Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis (FAES), headed by former conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Conference participants included Natan Sharanksy, the late former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the “independent Democrat” from Connecticut who is closely associated with the neoconservative faction in the United States. Also in attendance were a number of leading U.S. hawks, including the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) president Clifford May; the American Enterprise Institute’s Richard Perle, Michael Rubin, Michael Novak, Joshua Muravchik, and Reuel Marc Gerecht; Herb London, John O’Sullivan, and Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute; Bruce Jackson, a former director of the Project for the New American Century; and Tod Lindberg of the Hoover Institution.[28]Journalist Jim Lobe reported, “Sharansky, chairman of both the Adelson Institute and of One Jerusalem, a group created to oppose any move under the Oslo peace process to recognise Palestinian sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, is a former Soviet refusenik whose 2004 book, The Case for Democracy, helped inspire Bush’s ringing 2005 Inaugural Address … Aznar and Havel are co-chairs of the ‘international’ section of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which was launched by FDD in June 2004 and whose website is www.fightingterror.org. Sen. Joe Lieberman, an honorary co-chairman of CPD, keynoted the opening session. In other words, the conference constituted a kind of ‘Neo-Conservative International’ designed to rally support for ‘dissidents,’ primarily from the Islamic world, and give them hope that ‘regime change’ in their countries is possible much as it was in the former Soviet bloc almost 20 years ago.”[29]

In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) awarded Adelson the “Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion,” which is given to people who make a “unique, lasting, and historic contribution to the cause of Zionism and the Jewish people.”[30] Speakers at the event included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (by video), Vice Prime Minister and former Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA).

ZOA leader Morton Klein used the event to denounce the Likud-led government’s partial 2010 moratorium on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, calling the policy “racist.” During his talk after receiving the Herzl award, Adelson commented that “Each time [Klein] opened up his mouth, I thought it was me talking.” According to Forward, “A spokesman for Adelson stated later that his support for Netanyahu ‘has not changed.’ But Klein disclosed that Adelson will travel to Israel soon to lobby Netanyahu against the settlement moratorium.”[31]

Adelson’s support for Benjamin Netanyahu has also been at the center of a dispute over the future of Israel’s print media. In 2007, Adelson founded Yisrael Hayom (or Israel Today), a free Hebrew-language newspaper that, at its peak in 2015, had a print circulation of some 550,000 daily.[32] According to Forward, on its very first day in circulation, Yisrael Hayom was “already one of the largest-circulation papers in the country. Adelson’s new paper is drawing questions from other journalists, who worry about the mogul’s connections to Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, and also from the owners of other Israeli newspapers, who are a famously tight-knit club.”[33]

Since its beginnings, Yisrael Hayom was seen as a mouthpiece outlet for Netanyahu’s views and policies.[34] With Adelson willing to absorb a loss to promote these views among the Israeli public, other Israeli newspapers saw their own circulation decline sharply. Netanyahu allegedly offered to intervene on behalf of the newspaper with the second-highest circulation, Yediot Ahoronot, in exchange for favorable coverage. Adelson was asked to give testimony to the police investigating the affair.[35] In February 2018, Israeli police recommended that Netanyahu be indicted for bribery.[36] As the case grew grimmer for Netanyahu, Adelson shut him out. [37]

Conservative Philanthropy

Adelson’s philanthropy is directed though the Adelson Family Foundation, which he created in January 2007. Among its grantees has been the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, a project of the Shalem Center, a Likud Party-aligned group based in Jerusalem that describes itself on its web site as engaging “in research, education, and publications in areas that include Jewish moral and political thought, Zionist history and ideas, Biblical archaeology, democratic theory and practice, strategic studies, and economic and social policy.”[38]

During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson was supportive of the administration’s Middle East policies, though he opposed its efforts to jump start peace talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Condoleezza Rice-led Annapolis talks in late 2007. After the influential American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued a statement supporting the talks— which were aimed at a creating a framework for a two-state solution— Adelson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was withdrawing his support for AIPAC. He said: “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump.”[42]

As a backer of Freedom’s Watch, whose key leaders included former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and the strip-mall magnate Melvin Sembler, Adelson brought widespread media attention to his efforts to push for hawkish, Israel-centric U.S. policies. As the Washington Post reported: “Many in Freedom Watch’s donor base—including Adelson … and Sembler … —have always been strong supporters of Israel. The group’s initial ad blitz in defense of Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq came naturally out of those interests.”[43]

Commenting on the Post story, commentator Jim Lobe wrote: “I don’t doubt that the group’s donors consider themselves ‘strong supporters of Israel,’ but what precisely is meant by that? … It implies that neoconservatives have Israel’s best interests at heart, which, as in the case of the Iraq war (and last summer’s conflict with Hezbollah) and in so many other instances, is demonstrably not the case. It also puts those individuals or organizations—particularly in the American Jewish community—that are very concerned about Israel but that believe that the neoconservatives have actually undermined the country’s security in a kind of political limbo.”[44]

After his 2008 falling out with AIPAC, Adelson moved to increase his support of groups to the right of AIPAC, such as the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Israeli American Council (IAC), and the activities of right-wing Rabbi Shmueley Boteach. Reported New York Magazine in September 2015: “In the past two years, Adelson has also given more than $20 million to a group called the Israeli American Council (IAC), which was founded in 2007 in Los Angeles as an apolitical cultural organization for West Coast Israeli expats. Adelson, according to a person familiar with his thinking, intends to make IAC ‘a counterweight to AIPAC.’”[45]

By 2017, the IAC was established as a major player in pro-Israel politics in the United States. Speaking to the crowd at the IAC’s annual convention in November 2017, Adelson said “There are times when we cannot have equivocation, when we need a group of people to advocate for Israel unequivocally, and I felt if there was an organization called the Israeli-American Council, that council and that organization would unequivocally always without question and irreversibly support Israel when it needed it. There will be no political correctness. There will be no questions about whether we should keep the door to the White House open to us. There will be no partisanship.”[46]

In June 2015, Adelson, along with other hardline “pro-Israel” billionaires like Haim Saban, held a secret conference aimed at developing strategies to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, which calls for economically pressuring Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories.[47]

Adelson reportedly “dubbed his effort” to counter BDS “the ‘Campus Maccabees’—in honor of the Jewish army in the Hanukkah story—and promised to bundle as much as $50 million to the anti-BDS cause.” According to New York Magazine “’[The Adelsons] think, We’ve got to fix BDS because our son is going to college, and they’re scrambling to quote-unquote do something before he shows up at school.’”[48]

Adelson has also been a major political donor since long before he began supporting Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign. He donated more than $1 million to political candidates between 1984 and 2007, according to data gathered by campaign donor search engine Newsmeat. The vast majority of his donations during this period, more than $800,000, went to key Republicans, including George W. Bush, Rick Santorum, Tom Delay, and Rudy Giuliani.[49]

[39] Uri Blau, “From Textiles to the West Bank: Unraveling the Story of One the Main U.S. Donors to the Settlements,“ Haaretz December 15, 2015, https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-unraveling-the-story-of-one-the-main-u-s-donors-to-the-settlements-1.5377041

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